Wednesday, July 04, 2007

We saw TRANSFORMERS. It's not just a high-octane action movie about alien robots. It's also an fun comedy about a kid who gets his first car, only to discover it is an alien robot.

I have to say it is the best movie I've ever seen that was based on a series of action figures. (And I say this as one of the writers of a FoxKids series that was created largely to sell action figures.) Who knew Michael Bay could direct actors?

I wonder if John Rogers will tell us how his draft of the script differs from the final shooting script. Because I could have sworn the movie had his "voice."

9 Comments:

Really? I just saw this and found it really disappointing. Not because it was big and dumb, but because it was big and dumb and not particularly entertaining. It's saving grace for me was the Shia LeBeouf is quite charismatic. I walked in expecting to deal with a moronic plot, but I needed at least the semblance of logic. And then the big action scene was so jumpy I couldn't even enjoy it.

Saw it last night and really enjoyed it. I don't really care for Michael Bay's films, although I did enjoy The Island more than most. I felt that the role of the kid was well done, and almost had an American Pie feel to it with the scenes of him and his mom and dad.

I did think the Optimus Prime monologues were overdone and could have been streamlined and most of the Transformer characters were very underdeveloped. But overall I had a great time watching it and it did really have a similar feeling to the original cartoons and film.

It's really impressive how good this film is. Mixing comedy in - at the level that Transformers did - is hard to do and they practically have set a new bar for this.

Also, when films (or anything) have as much hype at the Transformers did, it's hard to live up to expectations, but man, Transformers for me exceeded expectations.

To Michael - I'm not sure why you expect logic in a film about superheroes. Transformers doesn't have any sense of logic in the real world. It's imagination - let your creativity run wild at the movies next time.

I didn't expect logic in the sense that everything should be realistic or something. But the plan for the main characters was nonexistent. Get the glasses and then...what? And then once they have the glasses, get the All Spark to a helicopter and then everything will be okay or something?

I've been realizing I'm in the minority on this, though. Also, I must confess, I'm a bit overly obsessed with logic in movies. Ultimately though, I was more distracted than I was entertained. It just didn't work for me.

I agree with Alex about Transformers being the best movie made based on a series of action figures, but I’ll take it a step further and say it’s the best movie I’ve seen that is an adaptation from a cartoon, comic, action figures, ect. The balance between comedy and action is perfect throughout the movie.

Obviously, there is some fridge logic, but this has to be expected from a cartoon/comic book movie. Besides for one or two spots (I think the main one for me was why was it essential for Shia’s character to take the cube to the top of the building, and what was going to happen if he succeeded in getting it to the helicopter??) there really aren’t moments in the movie where I am forced to be disengaged from watching the movie, and instead start wondering how/why is this in the movie. Instead, my attention is completely engaged in Shia and Megan Fox’s chemistry, the insanely awesome CGI, and Anthony Anderson’s brief, but hilarious, scenes.

The character development during the first portion of the movie goes a long way to building the storyline throughout the movie, and it definitely got me to be emotionally invested in the characters as the movie progressed.

It was definitely funny at times, but there was so much unnecessary junk floating about. The Australian supermodel who's the only "hacker" smart enough to figure out what the virus is sentient? Really? I might be singing a different tune if that actually came up again or was relevant to the rest of the story in any way... or if Anthony Anderson's character did anything for the story besides know morse code (who the hell just KNOWS morse code?)